Dilli Chaudhary, Director of 2002 Anti-Slavery Award winner Backward Society Education (BASE), was arrested with around 100 other demonstrators in Nepal on 18 July.

Large numbers of people have been protesting against the Nepal Government's failure to provide former bonded labourers with food, shelter, land, employment and education as required by law .

The activists were arrested while demonstrating outside the Singha Durba, the seat of government in the capital Kathmandu. Former bonded labourers have also been protesting across the country's mid and far western regions.

“We support Dilli Chaudhary and his fellow protesters' demand for the Government to provide former bonded labourers with the support they not only are entitled to, but require for their basic survival. Anti-Slavery International urges the Government to release the protestors; the urgency of their call for action cannot be silenced by the suppression of their human rights,” Aidan McQuade, Director of
Anti-Slavery International said.

In 2002, the Government of Nepal passed a law prohibiting a system of agricultural bonded labour called kamaiya. The law required the Government to provide former kamaiya bonded labourers with housing, employment and income-generating activities. But four years on, thousands of former bonded labourers remain without these vital means of support.

The demonstrations began on17 July, Kamaiya Liberation Day, which commemorates the Government's declaration in 2000 that bonded labour was illegal; though it was not until 2002 that it passed a law against this form of slavery.

In addition to calling for the 2002 Act to be fully implemented, Anti-Slavery International is calling for the Act to be amended to make rehabilitation provisions to all former kamaiya and to have new legislation that defines and prohibits all forms of bonded labour throughout Nepal.

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